Thoughts on culture and events by author and illustrator Christopher R Taylor

Monday, January 23, 2012

FAKEBOOK

"You don't need to have a boyfriend to get that boyfriend scent."

Facebook is incredibly popular and I'm not precisely sure why. I visit it a couple times a day to try to keep something on there that will maintain interest but some people spend hours a day on there chatting and commenting. Its become such an integral part of so many peoples' lives that they have begun to define social status and personal esteem by their facebook existence.

I'm single, and apparently that's a position of horror and misery for many people. So much so that there are folks charging real money to pretend to be a sweetheart on the site. For the men there are fake Facebook girlfriends, such as at the website Fiverr.com (where many different people advertise what they'll do for you on Facebook for five bucks). There you can choose between various girls who will pretend to be your girlfriend for five bucks, usually a week long for a certain number of messages.

They'll do it to make you seem like you have a hot girl, or to make another girl jealous (does that even work?), or whatever reason you want. Its just five dollars for this service! Some even offer to break up with your girlfriend on Facebook for you.

If you want to go a bit further, the website Cloud Girlfriend can hook you up as long as you want for a small fee. With this site you sign up for a "date" and if you like what you get from the person, you can buy tokens which may be used to redeem various services and responses from the girlfriend. There's no word if she gets really emotional and unstable once a month.

Such pathetic men, how lame must they be to do this, only a man would do that, huh?

Browse "boyfriend" on craft site etsy.com, and you'll find stickers made from retro yearbook hunks, designed for covering up loser exes in photos.

The most overt faux-beau on the market is the Boyfriend Pillow, available on Amazon.com. It's torso-shaped with a blue oxford shirt and an arm nook. An amorphous hand wraps around the small of your back. Online reviews are aplenty.

I spritz a little bit of Axe body spray on the "torso"and wrap that arm around me for a long, blissful night of rest.

I love this thing more than my real boyfriend. It doesn't talk.

Now, look, I get that people get lonely and want some kind of perceived attractiveness. I have noticed like every guy that having a girlfriend around somehow makes you perversely more attractive to other women, apparently it makes you seem desirable. But this is bordering on pathological, it seems to me.

Being single is not the worst status you can have, in fact its not even a bad thing. If you cannot bear being single there's probably something about your personality you should address before you go try to find a mate. Be comfortable with yourself before you burden someone else, please?